“Yes,” Veronica said. “He should have never been paroled the first time, or Billy would still be alive. He was sixty-five when he got out. I guess the parole board thought he was rehabilitated. Won’t those people ever learn that there’s no such thing as rehabilitating a pedophile?”
“Even prison inmates hate child killers,” Carolyn said, running through all the possibilities. “McAllen might have sodomized an inmate and the guy was waiting for him on the outside. And there could easily have been other child victims. Some parents don’t go to the authorities because they don’t want to expose their kid to the trauma of a trial, particularly if the child is male. Since they’d be adults by now, one of them could have heard that McAllen was out and killed him. There was something in the paper the other day about a guy in prison who kept a detailed diary. The prison officials got their hands on it and discovered a list of over a thousand boys this man had molested in the course of his lifetime. Don’t you think some of those victims might want revenge?”
“Sure,” Veronica said. “But there’s too many—”
“Look at me,” Carolyn said, taking hold of the other women’s chin and turning her face so they were eye to eye. “Do you really know who killed Abernathy and McAllen? Aren’t you just like the millions of people who watch the news and shows like Court TV, then make unsubstantiated speculations?”
“I guess you could put it like that,” Veronica said, resting her head against the seat cushion once Carolyn released her.
“If you want to go to the police, that’s fine. Only you can make that decision. Sometimes a higher justice steps in and takes care of things that we just can’t seem to make right. When that happens, who are we to ask questions?”
Veronica clasped Carolyn’s hand. “I knew you could help me make sense of this. You’re like a sister to me. When we were kids, I never dreamed we’d be working together. You were so smart. I was sure you’d be a doctor, a lawyer, a congresswoman, or someone else important. And me, I was going to be a prima ballerina, remember? Silly, wasn’t it?” She smiled weakly. “Of course, I didn’t know then that I’d end up with tree trunks for thighs.”
Carolyn reached for the door handle, then stopped. “If something definitive surfaces that links Bell to these killings, you’ll have to go to the police. For the time being, sit tight and see what happens.”
“Okay,” Veronica said, sniffling into a tissue.
“This is just a temporary fix. We can’t let a man who’s murdered two people go free, regardless of whether the people he killed deserved it. If Tyler Bell is responsible for these crimes, he may be insane enough to kill someone else.”
“Who would he kill?”
“Other criminals, people like child molesters or rapists. This man may have turned into a vigilante under the delusion that he’s doing society a favor. If that’s the case, we would have a moral obligation to stop him.”
“I don’t know,” Veronica said. “Maybe we do need people like that.”
“That’s the last thing we need,” Carolyn said firmly as she opened the car door, preparing to return to the office. “People who take the law into their own hands make mistakes and kill innocent people. That’s why we have courts and trials. If something comes up, let me know.”
When Carolyn arrived home at six-thirty that evening, she heard the phone ringing, dropped her purse and briefcase by the door, and raced to the kitchen to answer it. “I have good news for you, Carolyn,” Margaret Overton told her. “Your house sold. The money’s already in escrow, so you can pick up a check tomorrow.”
John walked in and opened the refrigerator. “Are you going to cook, or are we going to go out to dinner?”
“I’m on the phone,” Carolyn said, waving him away. “I don’t understand,” she told the real estate agent. “How could you sell my house without contacting me?”
“Well,” Margaret said, excited, “the buyer paid the full asking price. He paid cash, Carolyn. That means you don’t even have to wait for the check to clear. I thought you’d be elated.”
“But don’t I have to sign the papers? I can’t just move out of my house on a moment’s notice. I have to rent an apartment, hire a moving van, pack everything up. When do these people want to move in?”
“You’re a lucky lady,” Margaret said cheerfully. “The man who bought your house insisted the title be left in your name. He even paid off the existing mortgage. The house is yours. He said it was a gift.”
Carolyn was so flabbergasted that she told the agent she would call her back later. For a while, she just stared out the kitchen window. Her eyes drifted over the chipped tiles on the countertop, the white refrigerator that was on its last legs, the cabinets so desperately in need of refinishing. Without a house payment, she could not only pay John’s tuition, she could make some long overdue repairs. A short time later, she slumped against the counter, knowing she couldn’t accept such an enormous gift even if she and Marcus were engaged. He’d talked about the possibility of getting married, but it was far too soon. In reality, they hadn’t even been able to see each other that often. He was working long hours at his business, and Carolyn had wanted to spend as much time as possible with her children.
In a daze, Carolyn went down the hall to change her clothes and decide what they were going to do for dinner. She stopped in the door to Rebecca’s room. A canvas was on the easel, and her daughter was holding a palette in her left hand, her head tilted to one side as she studied her work. Neil was sprawled out on her bed, flipping through a fashion magazine and sipping a soda.
“What do you think?” Rebecca said, craning her neck around.
Neil peered out over the top of the magazine. “The skin tone is too white. Add some more pink, then paint over what you just did.”
“Why can’t I just paint flowers?” the girl whined, setting the palette down and searching through the tubes of oils on top of her bureau.
“Because flowers are boring,” her uncle told her. Seeing Carolyn in the doorway, he said, “When are you going to feed us kids? I’m starving.”
A minor miracle had occurred. Neil had a tendency to be obsessive-compulsive, particularly when it came to his surroundings. It was odd seeing him in the midst of Rebecca’s girlish clutter, relaxed and happy. When the kids had first moved into his house after the shooting, he’d run around picking up after them and swearing he was going to have a nervous breakdown if they didn’t go home immediately. Then one day it had all just stopped. Carolyn had come over and found dirty dishes in his sink, dirt on his normally pristine-perfect marble floors, and unmade beds piled high with clothes and schoolbooks. When she’d looked for Neil, she’d found him in his studio furiously painting. And since she’d brought the kids home, she couldn’t get rid of him. He spent the afternoons tutoring Rebecca, then wolfed down Carolyn’s home-cooked meals and after dinner lay around watching movies with John. He didn’t leave the house until the kids went to bed. At his own place, he worked through the night.
“Why don’t you cook tonight, Neil?” Carolyn said.
“Don’t be cruel,” her brother said, adjusting the pillow behind his neck. “Can’t you see I’m working with Rebecca? It would break her heart if I had to cut her lesson short. Isn’t that right, angel?”
“Not really,” the girl said, tossing her paintbrush down. “Get up off your ass, Neil, and help me mix the flesh tone. I don’t know what I did wrong, but it looks yellow now.”
Neil uncurled his lanky frame and walked over, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You’re doing great, honey. If you’re going to become a painter, you need to get used to frustration.” Once he’d shown her which colors to mix, he flopped down on his stomach on Rebecca’s bed again, hugging her ruffled pillow to his chest. “Make meatloaf and mashed potatoes. No, I changed my mind. Whip up some of that lasagna you made last week. Oh, and don’t forget the garlic bread. Call me before John gets to the table or there won’t be anything left to eat.”
“I’m not
your mother, Neil,” Carolyn told him. “Marcus—”
“I thought you weren’t seeing lover boy until tomorrow night.”
Rebecca snickered, but continued painting. “I’m not,” Carolyn answered, running her hands through her hair. “I just need to talk to him. You know, uninterrupted. There’re some steaks defrosted in the refrigerator. All you have to do is turn on the grill and cook them. Rebecca, make some baked potatoes in the microwave, and I’ve got some fresh asparagus. If you don’t want the asparagus, you can make a salad.”
Neil and Rebecca exchanged almost identical sneers. Carolyn felt as if she now had three teenagers instead of two. She went to her bedroom, closed the door, and called Marcus.
“How’s my girl?” he said.
“Are you still at work?” Carolyn said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Yes, but I can talk. What’s going on?”
“What you did was wonderful, Marcus. Never in a million years would I have thought anyone would do something like that for me. You have the biggest heart in the world. But the bottom line is I can’t let you pay off my house.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you really say someone paid off your house?”
Carolyn had suspected it was going to be this way. “I know it was you, Marcus, so don’t play games with me. Just call the Realtor and arrange to get your money back.”
“I swear it wasn’t me. You know I’m struggling right now with my business. I’d love to help you out, Carolyn, but I just don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around. Now if you and the kids want to move into my Santa Rosa place…”
“It’s too soon,” she said. “We’ve already discussed it. The kids are just getting to know you. Besides, I wouldn’t live with a man unless we were married.”
“Then we’ll get married.”
Carolyn felt like crying. This wasn’t a valid proposal, nor was it romantic. Marcus was merely trying to accommodate her. “Just so you’ll know, I’m going to reject the offer on the house. And there’s no reason to deny that it was you because I’ll find out the truth tomorrow when I go to the escrow company. I appreciate the gesture, Marcus, I just can’t accept it. Please try and understand. I want things to be right between us. I don’t want to take things from you.”
The line fell silent. Carolyn waited, knowing he was thinking. He was the type of person who weighed every word before speaking.
“When you find out who did this,” he finally said, “I’d really like to know. It must be one of your other admirers. I’m not sure if I should thank him or beat the shit out of him. How can I compete with someone like that? Buy you a hotel or something?”
What an act, Carolyn thought, smiling. “Am I going to see you tomorrow?”
“Doubtful,” Marcus said, yawning. “If I can break away, I’ll give you a call.”
Brian Irving’s partner, Quentin Starr, was a twenty-nine-year-old black detective. He was fit, and moved with the power and grace of an athlete. Even though Irving was only forty-three, Starr made him feel like a clumsy old man.
“I can’t believe you told Kathleen Masters we’d respond now,” Starr said, sitting behind the wheel of an unmarked police unit. “My shift is over in fifteen minutes. You’re not in Modesto anymore, my man. These rich people think they can order us around like their house servants. I tell them to go fuck themselves.”
“She knows the chief,” Irving explained, fidgeting in his seat. “I haven’t been with the department that long. My wife and kids like it here. You’re lucky you were on vacation when this went down.” Starr steered the car onto the freeway. “The lady went through a horrible ordeal, Quent. Anyone would be a little crazy after going through something like that. If we can placate her and she calms down, you’ll be home in an hour and I won’t have to face the chief in the morning, mad because an irate woman called him at home to report two of his officers.”
“We’ll see,” Quentin said. “Do you think there’s a shot in hell Arnie Layman is innocent?”
“There’s always a chance,” Irving told him. “Several things didn’t set well with me. The problem is that Chief Riggs wants this case closed. Public attention is a good thing when you’ve closed a case, not when you have to reopen one. Anyway, the evidence is stacked on Layman. It’s a slam dunk.”
“Now that I think about it, it was strange that he took off.”
“Turn right here,” Irving said, seeing the shrubs in front of Kathleen’s driveway. “You mean Dean Masters?”
“Yeah, what’s the deal with that?”
“When I spoke to him, Masters told me he’d been having problems with the wife even before the assault. She has a history of alcohol and prescription-drug abuse.”
“Her and just about everyone else who lives in this town. Even a rich drug addict has an advantage. They don’t have to go out on the street to score their dope, worrying they may get busted, or that some dealer cut their coke with rat poison. They get it from their doctors.”
“Masters couldn’t stand it anymore and was planning on asking her for a divorce.” Irving looked up at the sprawling house as his partner threw the gearshift into park. “What bothers me about this case is why someone living in a place like this would own a bottle of Old Crow whisky. I seriously doubt Layman brought his own bottle into the house and then smashed it over Kathleen Masters’s head. With a drunk, especially one who lived on the street like Layman, most of the crimes they commit are either to steal booze or the money to buy it. Guess Layman was more than your average drunk.”
“Unfortunately, he’s not around to answer that question. It’s hard to imagine that this Masters guy wouldn’t have at least waited until his wife got out of the hospital before he took off. Pretty heartless, don’t you think?”
“That doesn’t mean he tried to kill her.” Irving opened the car door. “Forget about it for now. Let’s find out what’s got Kathleen on a rampage this time.”
They knocked on the door, then waited until Kathleen answered and waved them inside. “Follow me,” she said, leading them upstairs. “Look around, then tell me if you notice anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t notice it at first, either.”
“No, not now or the dozens of other times I’ve been here,” Irving said, glancing into the library and master bedroom, more to placate her than with any thought that he might find anything. “What’s this about, Kathleen?”
“Dean took all the photographs of us together,” she said, sweeping her hand toward a grouping of ornate frames sitting on top of a long narrow table. “Those people are models. The stores put pictures like that in empty frames to help them sell. I usually don’t take the time to throw them away, and just put my own photos on top of them.”
“Isn’t it possible these are new frames you bought before the crime?”
“I’m not an idiot, Irving,” said Kathleen, giving him a steely gaze. “Tell me…if my husband hated me enough to leave me, why would he want to steal the few photos we had of us together? He’d only do that if he was planning to murder his wife. Did you find any fingerprints or DNA evidence that would link back to my husband?”
“Not your husband,” Irving answered, “but enough to make an airtight case against Arnold Layman.”
“Just so you’ll know,” Starr said, “murderers usually take off before the police show up, not after. My partner saw your husband. From what I heard, he saved your life by calling the doctor who lives next door. Why would he try to kill you, then save you?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Kathleen said, glaring at Irving. “In this extensive investigation you did, wouldn’t you expect to find evidence of my husband? He lived here, you know. He bathed here, slept here, shit here, had sex here.”
Irving started to lose his cool, then decided the harder he pushed, the harder she would push back. All he wanted was to put as much distance between him and Kathleen Masters as possible. “Let me explain,” he said in hushed tones. “Your husband wasn’t a suspect,
so we had no reason to take a DNA sample from him. Since Layman had been in prison, his DNA was on file.” He raised his right hand to keep her from interrupting. “It wouldn’t have helped us in the case, so why go to the trouble to take a sample from your husband? We knew he lived here. We had our perpetrator. Does that make things clearer?”
“It makes one thing clear,” Kathleen said, blowing an annoying hair off her forehead. “What about fingerprints?”
“The same applies to prints. We always find unidentified prints at crime scenes…you know, such as yours, your housekeeper’s, your husband’s, maybe some of your friends’. Once we got a match on Layman, like I keep telling you, there was no reason to do anything else. I gave thought to the possibility that your husband could have something to do with what happened, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence to substantiate it.”
“My husband didn’t leave any DNA or prints,” Kathleen said. “He cleaned the house, don’t you see? You were so focused on finding evidence to convict Layman, you failed to notice the lack of evidence that would make my husband a suspect.”
Detective Irving shrugged. “We did our job, Kathleen. Arnie Layman is the guilty party. Since he’s dead, the case is closed unless some kind of substantial new evidence comes to light. A few missing pictures and speculation that there were no prints or DNA belonging to your husband doesn’t fall into that category. And since we didn’t check, we can’t even verify what you’re saying is true.”
“We need to get going, Brian,” Starr said, trying to edge things along. “We have to get to that robbery.”
“It is what is it, sorry to say,” Irving added. “The best thing you can do, Kathleen, is learn how to accept it.”
She raised her arms and then let them drop to her side before heading down the stairs, leaving the detectives to follow. When they reached the family room, she spun around and faced them. “Sit down,” she instructed, pointing to the sofa. “Your department has plenty of other officers they can send to that robbery. That is, Detective Starr, if it wasn’t just a ploy so you could leave.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Like it or not, you’re going to listen to me. Dean devised a plan to kill me and pin the murder on Layman. He wore the drunk’s jacket to make me think it wasn’t him. He stood right over me. I saw his face. It wasn’t Layman, it was my husband. I don’t understand why you people won’t believe me. You’re going to let him get away with it, aren’t you?”
Sullivan’s Evidence Page 30